Diagnosis and Treatment of Autoimmune Pancreatitis. (Review)

Zharikov Y. O., Chzhao A. V.

The autoimmune pancreatitis was described in 1961 as “a primary inflammatory sclerosis of the pancreas”. Subsequent reports have described this disease as lymphoplasmacytic sclerosing pancreatitis, chronic sclerosing pancreatitis, nonalcoholic duct-destructive pancreatitis, inflammatory pseudotumor of pancreas, etc. The concept of autoimmune pancreatitis was proposed by Yoshida et al. in 1995. Numerous clinical, serological, radiological and pathological studies were conducted. Diagnostic criteria, serological markers and pathological features were introduced to facilitate autoimmune pancreatitis patients management. Also data were obtained indicating autoimmune pancreatitis as a part of new clinicopathological entity - IgG4-related sclerosing disease. Important issue is surgical treatment of autoimmune pancreatitis which is performed in case of suspected pancreatic cancer as a rule. Thus, autoimmune pancreatitis is an actual problem of modern medicine and requires further study.